Good people, bad leadership and culture - IT Developer Mapbox Employee Review

2.0
17 Jan 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I worked with great people who taught me a lot not only about my job and new things I wanted to learn, but also about life and how to be a better person.

Cons

I worked at Mapbox for four years. It started out fantastic but after the first year things started to deteriorate. A new "CEO-in-waiting" (so the founder could chillax more) joined the company and brought Amazon-style treatment of employees. Everything became about metrics and constantly having to defend yourself and your team in front of the entire engineering org in big meetings. My team, IT, was left out in the cold for six months when our manager left to manage a different team. Then, when they finally decided to hire us a manager, we had no voice in the process and the CEO-in-waiting hand-picked someone they had worked with at a prior company. All three of us with the most at stake had voted to not hire this person, but we were overruled. At Mapbox, don't bother to speak up about things that should change or stand up for your or other employees who are being mistreated. It will be met with platitudes and swept under the rug. Mid-level managers are not empowered to do anything that might contradict upper management's goals.

Explore other reviews about Mapbox

5.0
8 Dec 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

* Supportive and collaborative environment * Few big egos, at every level people are supportive/collaborative (see point 1) * International perspective * Developer/open source community focused * Huge documentation focus because of the multiple time zones, which helps with good cross-team communication * Well organized HR and training so that onboarding is smooth * Good benefits, volunteer time off, PTO, relaxed atmosphere with professionalism * Well-established business with clear goals

Cons

* Can be difficult to coordinate meetings across time zones (on the positive, this leads to fewer meetings and better documentation/written communication!) * Lots of moving parts, can be hard to see across whole company

1
3.0
19 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Some of the smartest people I've ever worked with as colleagues. Really interesting technology and problem space. Remote work and ownership culture are highlights.

Cons

CEO micromanages, doesn't delegate authority, and rarely celebrates success. He is not an inspiring leader to work for. Planning procedures do not allow resources to be managed for Automotive, resulting in repeated misses on goals and a lot of reactive work.

1
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All